The SCoVA Blog

A do-over that resulted in a 10-fold increase in the award for a rear-ended plaintiff and a dispute over a dissolving law firm’s capital account are among recent writs granted by the Supreme Court of Virginia. The retrial is Blevins v. Quarles, Record No. 100322, from Orange County, in which the trial judge set aside [...]

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When a Campbell County landfill was found responsible for groundwater pollution at a Rustburg mobile home park, a jury was asked to fix the damages the county owed to the landowners. The jury’s $9-million award is the subject of an appeal granted last week by the Supreme Court of Virginia, according to The News & [...]

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The case of a Norfolk judge who refused to enforce an arbitration clause in a nursing home contract is among the more interesting of the first flush of petitions for appeal granted by the Supreme Court of Virginia after its writ panel session earlier this month. We look at the case, Medical Facilities of America [...]

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Charles Edward Reed III might well have been as guilty as a Stafford County Circuit Court jury found him to be in June 2005. But there was a significant problem in the trial for murder and three related counts that netted Reed a sentence of life plus 38 years for what witnesses said was a [...]

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Although faulty eyewitness identification has been the basis for most of the convictions overturned by DNA evidence, it’s tough to get an appellate writ granted, much less have a conviction reversed, when the judge or jury believes the witness. So it was no surprise that Maurice James Ward’s challenge to a robbery victim’s identification of [...]

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Insurance coverage disputes are among the 20 cases, about half of them criminal, for which the Supreme Court of Virginia has recently granted petitions for appeal. One of the coverage cases, The AES Corp. v. Steadfast Insurance Corp., Record No. 100764, is from Arlington and stems from a California case filed by Native Americans in [...]

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The Supreme Court of Virginia is taking aim at the issue of whether a robber can be convicted of use of a firearm without evidence of a real gun. In March, the Court of Appeals overruled a 1995 decision holding that an object the victim reasonably believed to be a firearm could never constitute a [...]

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The Supreme Court of Virginia has granted a writ in a wrongful death drowning case where a judge held the claims against the city of Lexington fell short of gross negligence. The case arose from the 2006 drowning death of a 16-year-old boy below a dam on the Maury River in a city park. Circuit [...]

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Two statute of limitations cases, one involving an allegation of legal malpractice, are among the 14 granted appeals the Supreme Court of Virginia has posted on its Web site this month. The SOL cases are Laura Anna Head Kelley v. Pirsch & Associates PLLC (100446), which raises the issue of whether the three-year statute for [...]

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Among the appeals granted recently by the Supreme Court of Virginia is a contention that a Fairfax County Circuit judge erred in allowing a corporate defendant to assert repudiation as a defense to its former president’s breach of contract claim, Robert P. Bennett v. Sage Payment Solutions Inc., Record No. 100199. The president submitted a [...]

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